The Project Gutenberg eBook of Job and Solomon; Or, The Wisdom of the Old Testament, by Thomas Kelly Cheyne

120. Arabic literary history presents an example of literary experimenting which will at once occur to the mind—the ‘Maqamas’ or Sessions of Hariri.

121. On the mining passage see further p. 40. Stickel, however, though inclining to the above view, thinks that it is still not quite impossible that Palestinian mines are meant, comparing Edrisi’s statements on the iron-mines of Phœnicia and the words of the Deuteronomist in Deut. viii. 9. Das Buch Hiob, pp. 265-6.

122. ‘The Church in all ages has regarded the one as a type of the other,’ Turner, Studies Biblical and Oriental, p. 150. But Del. has already dissuaded from insisting too much on the historic character of the story of Job. ‘The endurance of Job’ (James v. 11) is equally instructive whether the story be real (wirklich) or only ideally true (wahr); and if by the phrase ‘the end of the Lord’ St. James refers to the Passion of Jesus (to me, however, this appears doubtful), he can be claimed with as much reason for the view of Job here adopted as for the older theory advocated by Turner.

123. On the Elihu-section, see Chap. XII.

124. Mozley, Essays, ii. 227; comp. Turner, Studies, p. 149.

125. Aubrey De Vere. Need I guard myself on the subject of Gen. iii. 15, referred to in a recent memorable debate in the Nineteenth Century? A strict Messianic interpretation is, since Calvin’s time, impossible to the exegete, but the application of the words to Jesus Christ is dear to the Christian heart, and perfectly consistent with a sincere exegesis. M. Réville would, I think, concede this to Mr. Gladstone.

126. Migne, Synes. et Theod., col. 698. Comp. Kihn, Theodor von Mopsuestia, p. 68 &c.

127. The Reason of Church Government, Book II.

128. Comp. Bateson Wright, The Book of Job, pp. 29-31.

129. Bunsen observes, not badly, ‘Hiob ist ein semitisches Drama aus der Zeit der Gefangenschaft. Das Dramatische windet sich aber erst aus dem Epos heraus, ohne eine selbstständige Gestalt zu gewinnen.’ Gott in der Geschichte, i. 291.

130. Compare Satan after his overthrow with Tasso’s Soldan (Gerus. Lib., c. ix., st. 98.)

131. Mr. Sutherland Edwards (Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1885, p. 687) states that Hebrew etymologies have proved failures. But the steps of the change from mastema to Mephistopheles are all proved, beginning with the name Mastiphat, for the prince of the demons, in the chronographers Syncellus and Georg. Cedrenus (comp. Μαστιφαάτ = Mastema in the Book of Jubilees). Comp. Diez, Roman. Wörterbuch, i. pp. xxv., xxvi.

132. Turner and Morshead, Faust (1882), pp. 307-8.

133. On the parallel phenomena in Job, see Chap. IX.

134. Sartor Resartus (‘Natural Supernaturalism’).

135. ‘A child of the first Christian century,’ Grätz’s Monatsschrift, p. 91. Nöldeke dates this version about 150 B.C. (Gott. gel. Anzeigen, 1865, p. 575).

136. Elzas, The Book of Job (1872), p. 83; Grätz inclines to a similar view.

137. A similar view has been propounded by Kennicott, and also more recently by Grätz (Monatsschrift, 1872, p. 247). But Kennicott regarded chap. xxviii. as Job’s reply to Zophar, while Grätz would include it in the speech of Zophar.

138. The heading ‘the oracle’ &c. in xxx. I is exceptional; so also is the oracle of Eliphaz (Job iv. 12-21).

139. The author of Baruch (iii. 22, 23), however, expressly denies that the ordinary Semitic ‘wisdom’ was akin to that of Israel. This represents the Judaism of the Maccabean period.

140. Observe that ‘wisdom’ is called khokmōth (plural form) in Prov. i. 20, ix. 11, all the forms of wisdom being viewed as one in their origin. So too Wisdom adorns her house with seven pillars (Prov. ix. 1).

142. I.e. Perdition; a synonym for Sheól.

143. The author of the Introduction however writes, ‘Honour Jehovah with thy substance,’ i.e. by dedicating a part of it to the sanctuary (iii. 9), which the Septuagint translator carefully limits to substance lawfully gained (Deut. xxiii. 19).

144. As perhaps they do in Am. v. 10, Isa. xxix. 21 (‘him that rebuketh in the gate’). Observe again in this connection that the endowments of the Messiah include the spirit of wisdom as well as that of might (Isa. xi. 2), and that the wisdom of Jehovah is emphasised in Isa. xxxi. 2, comp. xxviii. 29.

145. Die dichter des alten bundes, ii. 12. Ewald refers to xiii. 1, xiv. 6, and other passages in which ‘scorners’ are referred to. But it is not clear that ‘a powerful school’ of wise men is here intended; the title may be given to those who opposed or despised the counsels of the wise men, and broke through the restraints of law and religion; comp. Prov. xv. 12, xxi. 24.’ (The Prophecies of Isaiah, ed. 3, i. 165). Among such persons were the politicians of Isaiah’s day, so far as they opposed the warnings of the prophet; they were popularly considered ‘wise men’ (xxix. 14; comp. Jer. viii. 9), but not in the technical sense with which our present enquiries are concerned.

146. Luzzatto renders, ‘o voi uomini insipienti, poeti di questo popolo,’ taking mōshēlīm in the same sense as in Num. xxi. 27 (similarly Barth, in his tract on Isaiah, p. 23, following Rashi and Aben Ezra), a view which receives some support from the parable offered by Isaiah in xxviii. 23-29 as if in opposition to the false parables of unsound teachers. But in Isa. xxix. 20 ‘scorner’ is clearly used, not as a class-name for certain wise men, but in a moral sense.

147. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 91.

148. Yet in Prov. iii. 11, 12 there is distinct evidence of deepened experience and progress of moral thought.

149. On the orthodoxy of Ecclesiasticus, see later on.

150. The Vulg. has, iter autem devium ducit ad mortem (but this pregnant sense of iter devium, is too bold).

151. Analogous only, because apparently it had both a tree and a fountain of life, like a New Zealand myth mentioned by Schirren.

152. Curtius, History of Greece, ii. 52.

153. Ewald infers from xvii. 16 that even in early times it was customary to fee the ‘wise men’ for their advice (comp. Saul and Samuel). At a later time Sirach says, ‘Buy (instruction) for yourselves without money’ (Ecclus. li. 25, but comp. 28). The Rabbis were not allowed to receive fees from their pupils. R. Zadok said, ‘Make not (the Tora) a crown to glory in, nor an axe to live by’ (Pirke Aboth, iv. 9). So the Moslem teachers at the great Cairo ‘university’ (el Azhar).

154. In the Midrash-literature, proverbs are often quoted with an express statement that they are from the lips of the people.

155. See Smith and Sayce’s Chaldæan Genesis, pp. 140-154. For the Egyptian animal-fables, which may be the originals of those of Æsop, see Mahaffy, Prolegomena to Anc. Hist., p. 390; for the Indian, see the apologues of the Panchatantra by Benfey or Lancereau, and the Buddhist Birth-Stories—‘the oldest, most complete, and most important collection of folk-lore extant’—translated by Rhys Davids, vol. i.

156. The Bible for Young People, E. T., iii. 105-6.

157. 1 Kings x. 1; comp. Menander’s account in Josephus, Antiq. viii. 5, 3.

158. From Max Müller’s translation of the Dhammapada, or ‘Path of Virtue’ (1870).

159. Dr. Back gives a list of these in Grätz’s Monatsschrift, 1854, pp. 265-7.

160. In the Talmudic treatise Soferim xvi. 9, a list of Hillel’s acquirements is given, including the conversations of the mountains, the trees, the animals, the demons, &c. On the Jewish fable literature, the wealth of which seems unparalleled, see Back, Die Fabel in Talmud und Midrash, in Gratz’s Monatsschrift, 1875-1884. Curiously enough the two oldest Jewish fables are similar in character to those of the Old Test.

161. Comp. Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 75, 76, 100-103; Mahaffy, Prolegomena to Ancient History, pp. 273-291; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 91; Records of the Past, viii. 157-160.

162. Comp. Weber, Indische Literaturgeschichte, p. 227.

163. See Scarborough, Collection of Chinese Proverbs (1875). The Chinese proverbs have no known authors.

164. On the riddles referred to, see Wünsche, Die Räthselweisheit bei den Hebräern (1883). Comp. them with the later Arabic proverbs (see Hariri, and comp. Freytag, Proverbia arabica).

165. Dr. Grätz is of opinion that Solomon was a fabulist like Jotham; in the text I have followed Josephus (Ant. vii. 2, 5). Legend related how the wise king, like the early men in African folk-lore (Max Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 116), talked with (not merely of) beasts, birds, and fishes, but delighted most in the birds.

166. This was also the opinion of Ewald (History, iii. 281). It might now be urged in its favour that Assurbanipal’s library contained bilingual lists of animals, vegetables, and minerals. But remember that the Assyrians were incomparably more civilised than the Israelites, and had both a lexicographical and a scientific interest in making these lists, and above all that Solomon is not stated to have written, but only to have spoken.

167. See the Tosefoth to the Talmudic treatise Baba bathra, 14b, where the name is given both to Proverbs and to Ecclesiastes. It is however more commonly found in Christian than in Jewish literature, often under the fuller form ἡ πανάρετος σοφία (see especially Eusebius, H. E., iv. 22).

168. The second line however seems to have intruded from ver. 11, and thus to have supplanted the original.

169. Here again the second line is evidently an intruder (from ver. 8). We should doubtless read with Sept., ‘but he that reproves produces welfare.’

170. This word (takhbūlōth) also occurs in xxiv. 6, i. 5, Job xxxvii. 12.

171. For m’raddēf read m’gaddēf.

172. Landberg denies that Maidani’s proverbs were ever really popular, but A. Müller judges that this view is extravagant (Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, xii. 441).

173. The text has ‘than he who is perverse in his lips and is a fool.’ With Grätz, I follow the Peshitto and (partly) the Vulgate.

174. Pointing ōbhēd, with Hitzig, Ewald, and Bickell; comp. ver, 11. Dijserinck ingeniously emends çōbhēr ‘heaps up’ (i.e. saves).

175. Comp. Thomson, The Land and the Book, pp. 336-8.

176. The word is behēma (Seneca’s ‘muta animalia’). Schopenhauer, thinking perhaps of the Levitical sacrifices, accuses the Old Testament of cruelty to animals. But see, besides this passage, Gen. i. 27-29, Num. xxii. 28, Jon. iv. 11.

177. With Hitzig and others, taking ’îsh as a softened form yēsh (comp. 2 Sam. xiv. 19, Mic. vi. 10); the yōd is kept as in Aramaic. So Targ., Pesh.

178. At the end of ver. 19 Bickell nearly follows Sept. Cod. Vat., τὴν ὁδόν σου (A.C.S. αὐτοῦ). But as this takes the place of hayyōm, it would seem that Bickell ought to begin ver. 20 with af ethmōl. This however would not suit his metrical theory.

179. The phraseological resemblance of xxiii. 19b to iv. 14b is incomplete. As for khokmōth in xxiv. 7, it means simply ‘wisdom’ (as in xiv. 1, where khakmōth is wrong); the parallelism with i. 20, ix. 1 is not of critical importance. Any real points of contact (such as xxiii. 23a; comp. iv. 5, 7) can be accounted for by imitation, and one could easily bring together points of difference.

180. The word for ‘mast’ is a ἅπ. λεγ. The Septuagint and Peshitto have ‘as a steersman (or seaman) in great breakers.’

181. xxiv. 23b is no exception; it is merely the first line of a hexastich.

182. For ‘and afterwards’ the Hebrew has ‘afterwards and thou shalt build.’ ‘And’ may mean ‘then,’ marking out the perfect as consecutive, but it may also have been intended to join two parts of a sentence.

183. ‘These also’ suggests that what follows is a last gleaning of Solomonic proverbs. And in fact xxv. 24, xxvi. 13, 15, 22, xxvii. 12, 13, 21a, seem to be taken from the ‘Solomonic’ collection. Hitzig however rejects this view. Why did not the collectors combine all the Solomonic proverbs they could find in one work? So he supposes this new collection to have been made ‘aus dem Volksmunde,’ and remarks that a commission would be specially appropriate for this task. To me this seems an anachronism. The proverbs of the Hezekian collection are moreover as artistic as those of the first ‘Solomonic.’

184. So virtually the Septuagint (ἑξεγράψαντο), followed by the Peshitto and the Targum: Aquila, μετῆραν. The Greek, curiously enough, inserts an epithet for the proverbs, viz. αἱ ἀδιάκριτοι, i.e. either impossible to distinguish, miscellaneous (so Sophocles, Lexicon), or better, difficult to interpret. Symmachus has ἀδιάκριτος for bōhū, Gen. i. 2. The Peshitto and Targum render the Greek of our passage by ‘deep proverbs,’ i.e. enigmatical ones (so too Aquila and Theodotion in the Syro-hexapla).

185. Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah, i. 228-9 (on Isa. xxxviii. 9).

186. Sayce’s ed. of Smith’s Chaldean Genesis, pp. 15, 26, 27.

187. Sept., Symm., Pesh., Vulg., however, attach the lost line of ver. 7 to ver. 8 (‘Quæ viderunt oculi tui, ne proferas in jurgio cito’), which makes ver. 7 a distich and ver. 8 a tetrastich.

188. Reading b’khōm for b’yōm with Sept.

189. Literally, ‘a word spoken (or, perhaps, driven, or sent home) on its wheels,’ i.e. smoothly and elegantly (‘ore rotundo’). So Schultens, who sees a reference to the tropes and figures of elegant Oriental style. Comp. Neil, Palestine Explored, p. 197. The interpretation is an attractive one, though uncertain. Ewald has a slightly different view (see History, ii. p. 14, n. 6).

190. Carlyle however borrows an Arabic proverb (Freytag, Prov. Ar., iii. 92).

191. It is of course possible that xxviii. 2 may be of northern origin, but why should not a wise man in Judah have watched with sympathy the course of events in Israel?

192. Reading, with Grätz, ’āshīr for rāsh ‘poor,’ which makes no sense.

193. Sept. well ἀποξενωθεῇ.

194. Notice however the remarkable saying, already quoted, in xxix.

195. The proverbs xxvi. 1, 3-12, form a string of satirical attacks on the ‘fool’ or stupid man.

196. One of these points however is noticed in the earliest part of the Law. The love of one’s enemy is taught in Ex. xxiii. 4, 5.

197. See however Mr. Yonge in The Expositor, Aug. 1885, pp. 158-9.

198. The received text has ‘vinegar upon nitre;’ but this would be rather an emblem for anger. The correction is Bickell’s, and is partly founded on Sept. (ὥσπερ ὄξος ἕλκει ἀσύμφορον). The opening words of the verse in rec. text arise from the repetition in a corrupt form of the four last words of the preceding verse (Lagarde and Bickell).

199. The Septuagint has ‘smooth lips.’

200. To have added ‘but perfidious,’ would have made the line too long.

201. This seems a combination of two distinct proverbs. The one says that a friend can give more sympathy than a relative; the other, that a neighbour, being on the spot, can give more help than a relative at a distance.

202. A humorous picture! Such ostentatious and inopportune salutations are execrable flattery.

203. On the conjectural reading, ‘the man of Massa’ (‘Massa,’ instead of ‘the prophecy’), see Chap. VI.

204. This was the view of St. Jerome, derived of course from his Jewish teacher.

205. Pointing lāīthī.

206. Reading with Bickell v’lō ūkāl. Another correction of the text is, v’ēkel ‘and have pined away.’

207. Q’dōshīm, a word formed on the analogy of elōhīm; comp. ix. 10, Hos. xii. 1.

208. It may be objected that ‘hath gone up and come down’ does not suit this explanation, and that, to refer to God, it should run ‘hath come down and gone up.’ But we have ‘angels of Elohim ascending and descending’ in Gen. xxviii. 12; usage, in Hebrew as in English, forbids the phrase ‘to go down and up.’

209. ‘More probably;’ because the name of the speaker in viii. 24 has been told.

210. Comp. Ewald, Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott, iii. 2, pp. 81, 82.

211. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, v. 356; comp. Max Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 316.

212. See above, p. 128, and comp. Wünsche, Midrasch Kohelet, p. xiii.

213. Sept., followed by Pesh., reads ‘three’ for ‘two.’ Accepting this reading, the second half of the verse becomes an explanation of the first.

214. Bickell’s reconstruction of the text makes the proverbs symmetrical with the rest. In lines 5, 6 he makes an ingenious parallelism with mēthīm ‘dead’ and m’thīm ‘men’ (i.e. children).

215. F. Johnson’s translation (1848), chap. ii., fable 7; comp. Fritze’s metrical version (Leipz. 1884).

216. Muir, Metrical Translations (1879), p. 160.

217. On the early importance of the queen-mother, see Cheyne’s Isaiah, i. 47, note 1 (on Isa. vii. 13).

218. This hardly recommends the view of Costelli, that this poem is properly the conclusion of the introductory treatise (i.-ix.)

219. (Maspero) Records of the Past, ii. 9-16.

220. Its close relation to the first of the two great anthologies is shown by the linguistic points of contact between the two works (see Chap. VI.)

221. Rev. J. H. Thorn.

222. The poet, we can see, has not arranged the creative works as carefully as the cosmogonist in Genesis.

223.

Pleaseth him, the Eternal Child,

To play his sweet will, glad and wild.—Emerson, Wood Notes.

224. ‘Produced’ seems the best rendering (Sept., ἔκτισε), in the sense of ‘creating,’ not (as Del.) of ‘revealing,’ for which there is no authority. The secondary meaning ‘possessed’ (Aquila &c. ἐκτήσατο, Vulg. possedit; comp. Eccles. xxiv. 6) is less agreeable to the context (see Hitzig’s note). There is the same diversity of rendering in Gen. xiv. 19-22. On the patristic expositions of this passage, see Dean Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, ed. 1, i. 299. The ante-Nicene Fathers mostly apply it to the divine generation of the Son, the post-Nicene to the generation of the human nature of Christ. Basil and Epiphanius are exceptions. The former applies the passage to ‘that wisdom which the apostle mentions’ (in 1 Cor. i. 21): the latter expresses a strong opinion that ‘it does not at all speak concerning the Son of God.’

225. Comp. Milton’s noble conception of the Creator’s golden compasses (Par. Lost, vii. 225, 6).

226. Comp. Delitzsch, System der christlichen Apologetik, § 16, where the history of this conception in Jewish literature is traced in connection with that of the Logos-idea; also Ewald, Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott, iii. 74-77.

227. In Wisd. vii. 22 &c. the language appears to some to rise above poetical personification, and to imply a conscious hypostatising of Wisdom. Dante, a good judge on this point, certainly thought otherwise (Convito, iii. 15); he evidently holds that the Sophia of the Book of Wisdom is precisely analogous to his own very strong personification of divine Philosophy. Still such language may have partly prepared the way for the well-known Gnostic myth of Achamoth or Sophia (comp. Baur, Three First Centuries, E. T., i. 207). It was well, as Plumptre remarks, that Philo adopted Logos rather than Sophia as the name of the creative energy. A system in which Sophia had been the dominant word might have led to an earlier development of Mariolatry (Introduction to Proverbs in the Speaker’s Commentary).

228. Ecclus. xxiv. 23. (Comp. a sublime passage of E. Irving, identifying the contents of the ‘sacred volume’ with ‘the primeval divinity of revealed Wisdom,’ Miscellanies, p. 380 &c.) According to late Jewish theology, the Law is one of the seven things produced before the creation of the world. The alphabet-fables in Talmud and Midrash, in which letters of the alphabet converse with God, presuppose the same view (comp. the Mohammedan view of the Koran).

229. So Milton (a Hebraist), Paradise Lost, vii. 10 (‘didst play’), and again in Tetrachordon (‘God himself conceals not his own recreations,’ &c.)

230. The proof of this cannot be given here.

231. See ii. 4, iii. 13-15, iv. 7, vii. 16, 17, 19, 20 (especially), viii. 10, 18-21.

232. Comp. i. 32, 33, ii. 21, 22, iii. 1-10, ix. 11, 12, 18.

233. Keil qualifies this however by admitting that Solomon may have incorporated many sayings of other wise men.

234. Die Sprüche Salomo’s, v. xvii.

235. Die biblische Theologie, i. 563.

236. The Religion of Israel, ii. 242.

237. The passages in II. Isaiah referred to in this paragraph belong to sections most probably of post-Exile origin. (See art. ‘Isaiah’ in Encyclopædia Britannica, new ed.)